August 9, 2015

We did a DIY week at PAFA's Summer Art Camp, and banged out a million projects.
And here they are, in roughly chronological order:

1. Papier-mâché confetti bowls (from paper confetti, Mod-Podge, water balloons). These turned out very cool, and I can't stop thinking about other possibilities.

2. Shrinky-dink jewelry. We drew symbols and shapes and used my Ellison die cut machine and made necklaces and bracelets and pins and earrings and everything. If you're a girl from the 80's you're already reminiscing, right?

3. String art. The girls choose pieces of wood, sanded and painted them, then designed simple or complex symbols and designs and hammered them out with finishing nails, and connected the dots with embroidery floss. Seen here, the YouTube play button and a multi-faceted heart.

4. Lots of loom work! Tons of little weavings, which were displayed together for our exhibition.

5. Embroidery floss surfaced again in these wrapped charger cords. If we must plug in, let's keep it fancy, yeah?

6. Glue and food coloring combined to make these cool suncatchers. Super simple project, THX INSTAGRAM. Pour a little Elmer's in the bottom of a plastic or styrofoam container, swirl in some food coloring (not liquid watercolors as it turns out) and put it in a sunny, airy spot to dry. Pop them out a few days later and string them up.

7. We got super scientific and made these faux geodes by dissolving alum in hot (microwaved, cringe, not boiled) water, and leaving clean eggshells in the concoction overnight. Got this from Martha and the sisters at A Beautiful Mess. The internet wins again!

8. A special guest visited the studio and helped us make these cool and weird felted soaps! Wool/hot water/soap, etc. Supposed to be great for exfoliating? Almost too pretty to use. Instructions on Katie's blog.

9. We didn't exactly follow all the moves in this "ancient tradition", but we experimented with some shibori techniques, and landed with some pretty beautiful results (I should have taken more pictures).

10. We visited the galleries at PAFA a few times for inspiration, and on one trip we sketched tattoo ideas based on favorite paintings and drawings! The drawings got copied onto tattoo paper and were SO cool. It's not cheap (the tattoo paper) but it worked really well, and was fun to experiment with.

11. I like to use emojis, but not as much as 12 year old girls like to use emojis. We used a button machine and made lots of emoji buttons and magnets (until the machine got jammed. Sigh.)

12. I discovered some abandoned scrap leather (in my kitchen cabinets, which I use for overflow craft supply storage, obv), so we used it to make fringy and shaped leather keychains! Fun! Grommets are loud! Bang bang bang!

13. One of our last projects were these very cool fused plastic wallets. You'll read more about these someday on Ellison Education's blog, but for now, get excited about knowing you can use an iron and scissors to turn your Justice bag into a change purse. Or whatever.

AND THAT'S A WRAP.

Questions about any of these processes? Scoop Pinterest, like I probably did, or get at me:sue@puppyjawns.com

PUPPY JAWNS is a showcase of students' best/funnest/funniest artwork, and represents a variety of projects completed at home, at school, or in early education. Some lesson plans I developed myself, others are collaborative projects or adopted from other teachers and bloggers.